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Russell Kirk

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Russell Kirk

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Also known as Russell Amos Kirk

American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and writer (1918–1994)

Person · Open Library

Born
19 October 1918
Died
April 1994
Works
59

Top works

  • The American college
  • Gateway to the Stoics
  • The Century's Best Horror Fiction. Volume 2
  • The Dark Descent
  • Breve Manual de Conservadorismo

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
United States
Active from
1935-08-07
Active to
1977-12-05
2008 universal fire victimhard bopjazzjazz and bluessoul jazz

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
43
Total plays
335

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Russell+Kirk">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Russell Kirk

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

  1. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities

    · 2000 · cited 23,019x

  2. A simple method for displaying the hydropathic character of a protein

    · 1982 · cited 18,691x

  3. A global reference for human genetic variation

    · 2015 · cited 17,786x

  4. Atherosclerosis — An Inflammatory Disease

    · 1999 · cited 17,125x

  5. Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis

    · 2022 · cited 13,894x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

  • There are six canons of conservative thought:
  • Rousseau and his disciples were resolved to force men to be free; in most of the world, they triumphed; men are set free from family, church, town, class, guild; yet they wear, instead, the chains of the state, and they expire of ennui or stifling lonelines.
  • The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.
  • Even the wisest of mankind cannot live by reason alone; pure arrogant reason, denying the claims of prejudice (which commonly are also the claims of conscience), leads to a wasteland of withered hopes and crying loneliness, empty of God and man: the wilderness in which Satan tempted Christ was not more dreadful than the arid expanse of intellectual vanity deprived of tradition and intuition, where modern man is tempted by his own pride.
  • Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society is the end for which Providence has prepared man.
  • Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
Russell Amos Kirk , ( 1918-10-19 ) October 19, 1918, Plymouth, Michigan , U.S.
Died
April 29, 1994 (1994-04-29) (aged 75), Mecosta, Michigan , U.S.
Spouse
Annette Courtemanche ​ ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1964 ) ​
Education
Michigan State University ( BA ), Duke University ( MA ), University of St Andrews ( DLitt )
Era
20th-century philosophy
School
Traditionalist conservatism , American conservatism , Christian humanism
Main interests
Politics, history, fiction
Notable works
The Conservative Mind Roots of American Order
Website
kirkcenter .org

via Wikipedia infobox

~35 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Russell Amos Kirk (October 19, 1918 – April 29, 1994) was an American political philosopher, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, lecturer, author, and novelist who influenced 20th century American conservatism. In 1953, he authored The Conservative Mind, which outlined and traced the development of socio-conservative thought in the works of Anglo-American tradition, such as those of Edmund Burke. The book helped establish the intellectual framework for a religious and humanistic understanding of conservatism in the postwar era. Kirk was the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism.

Scholars have identified Kirk as an important twentieth-century proponent of Christian humanism, placing him in conversation with figures such as T. S. Eliot, Christopher Dawson, and Romano Guardini.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Russell Kirk” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.